Zilboorg, Gregory

Gregory Zilboorg was a prominent psychiatrist and convert to Catholicism. Merton obtained a rare permission to leave Gethsemani to hear Gregory Zilboorg lecture at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Merton spoke privately to Zilboorg of his desire for more solitude and to live as a hermit at Gethsemani or to leave if that were not possible. Zilboorg considered his feelings pathological, a message Dom James, Merton's abbot, was happy to hear. It is questionable whether Zilboorg's harsh criticism, some of which may be defended, was unbiased. Merton's pre-monastic interest in Sigmund Freud was rekindled, and Zilboorg may have felt threatened by another prominent Catholic convert writing on the subject. Zilboorg writes to Merton from New York. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, p. 550.)